SOCIAL SCIENCE BULLETIN No. 2  ...

PUBLISHED BY University of Arizona TUCSON, ARIZONA I. Introduction General Statement The Challenge The Myth, Its Meaning and Function in Primitive Life II. The Hopi Their Country, The People III. Hopi Social Organization Government The Clan and Marriage Property, Lands, Houses, Divorce Woman's Work Man's Work IV. Pottery and Basket Making Traditional, Its Symbolism V. House Building VI. Myth and Folktale, General Discussion Stability Intrusion of Contemporary Material How and Why Myths are Kept

Showing that the Present-Day Social Organization of the Hopi Is the Outgrowth of Their Unwritten Literature By a brief survey of present day Hopi culture and an examination into the myths and traditions constituting the unwritten literature of this people, this bulletin proposes to show that an intimate connection exists between their ritual acts, their moral standards, their social organization, even their practical activities of today, and their myths and tales—the still unwritten legendary lo

Their Country—The People The Hopi Indians live in northern Arizona about one hundred miles northeast of Flagstaff, seventy miles north of Winslow, and seventy-five miles north of Holbrook. For at least eight hundred years the Hopi pueblos have occupied the southern points of three fingers of Black Mesa, the outstanding physical feature of the country, commonly referred to as First, Second, and Third Mesas. It is evident that in late prehistoric times several large villages were located at the fo

Government In government, the village is the unit, and a genuinely democratic government it is. There is a house chief, a Kiva chief, a war chief, the speaker chief or town crier, and the chiefs of the clans who are likewise chiefs of the fraternities; all these making up a council which rules the pueblo, the crier publishing its decisions. Laws are traditional and unwritten. Hough [5] says infractions are so few that it would be hard to say what the penalties are, probably ridicule and ostracis

The art of pottery-making is a traditional one; mothers teach their daughters, even as their mothers taught them. There are no recipes for exact proportions and mixtures, no thermometer for controlling temperatures, no stencil or pattern set down upon paper for laying out the designs. The perfection of the finished work depends upon the potter's sense of rightness and the skill developed by practicing the methods of her ancestors with such variation as her own originality and ingenuity may sugge

As already stated, the house (See Figure 3) belongs to the woman. She literally builds it, and she is the head of the family, but the men help with the lifting of timbers, and now-a-days often lay up the masonry if desired; the woman is still the plasterer. The ancestral home is very dear to the Hopi heart, men, women, and children alike. After the stone for building has been gathered, the builder goes to the chief of the village who gives him four small eagle feathers to which are tied short co

Stability Because none of this material could be written down but was passed by word of mouth from generation to generation, changes naturally occurred. Often a tale traveled from one tribe to another and was incorporated, in whole or in part, into the tribal lore of the neighbor—thus adding something. And, we may suppose, some were more or less forgotten and thus lost; but, as Wissler [12] tells us, "tales that are directly associated with ceremonies and, especially, if they must be recited as

Gods and Kachinas The Hopi live, move, and have their being in religion. To them the unseen world is peopled with a host of beings, good and bad, and everything in nature has its being or spirit. Just what kind of religion shall we call this of the Hopi? Seeing the importance of the sun in their rites, one is inclined to say Sun Worship; but clouds, rain, springs, streams enter into the idea, and we say Nature Worship. A study of the great Snake Cult suggests Snake Worship; but their reverence f

Beliefs and Ceremonials The beliefs of a tribe, philosophical, religious, and magical, are, for the most part, expressed in objective ceremonies. The formal procedure or ritual is essentially a representation or dramatization of the main idea, usually based upon a narrative. Often the ceremony opens with or is preceded by the narration of the myth on which it is based, or the leader may merely refer to it on the assumption that everyone present knows it. As to the purpose of the ceremony, there

The Emergence Myth and the Wu-wu-che-ma Ceremony Each of the Hopi clans preserves a separate origin or emergence myth, agreeing in all essential parts, but carrying in its details special reference to its own clan. All of them claim, however, a common origin in the interior of the earth, and although the place of emergence to the surface is set in widely separated localities, they agree in maintaining this to be the fourth plane on which mankind has existed. The following is an abbreviation of t

The story of the Hopi, who does every important thing in his life according to a traditional pattern and accompanied by appropriate religious ceremony, would not be complete without some account of birth, marriage, and burial. Not having seen these ceremonies, the writer offers the record of authoritative observers. Birth Babies are welcomed and well cared for in Hopiland, and now that the young mothers are learning to discard unripe corn, fruit, and melons as baby food, the infant mortality, on

Fewkes, Stephen, Mindeleff, Voth, and others have collected the more important tales of migrations and the major myths underlying both religion and social organization among the Hopi. One gets substantially the same versions today from the oldest story-tellers. These are the stories that never grow old; in the kiva and at the fireside they live on, for these are the vital things on which Hopi life is built. However, there is a lighter side, of which we have heard less, to this unwritten literatu

For some years the writer has been merely a friendly neighbor to these friendly people, and this past summer she spent some time among her Hopi friends, studying their present-day life, domestic and ceremonial, and listening to their stories. The foregoing pages record her observations, supplemented largely by the recordings of well-known authorities who have studied these people. To her own mind it is clear that the Hopi are living today by their age-old and amazingly primitive traditions, as s

More than to any one else, I am indebted to Dr. Byron Cummings for guidance in the preparation of this study; to Prof. John H. Provinse for material and suggestion; to Dr. H.S. Colton and Mary Russell F. Colton for the generous use of materials; and to my Hopi friends, Sackongsie of Bacabi, Don Talayesva of Oraibi, Guanyanum Sacknumptewa of Lower Oraibi, Quentin Quahongva of Shungopovi, Dawavantsie of Walpi, and Mother Lalo of Sichomovi, for Hopi stories.—H.G.L.  ...